Seriously?

The two-faced steamroller antics of Google far outstrip even the microsoft of the '90s. The more I hear about them the more I weep for the company that showed such promise of reforming the way big tech business does big business.

The fact that they give away loads of cool stuff shouldn't blind an intelligent person from this. Some more cynical than me might even call it a bribe for the stupid. Not ME you understand. I'm a pragmatist not a cynic.

Is it just me or is it warm in here?

"Only to those who have fallen for the sceptics propaganda. I have yet to see a sceptic claim that is not thoroughly debunked."

Depends what you read. I've yet to see a sceptic's OR zealot's claim that the other side hasn't debunked, then the original side claiming that it hasn't and that the other side uses pseudo science, and only idiots believe THEM because anyone can SEE we're right, etc, etc. Ad nauseum.

I feel sorry for both sides and only actively hate the lying, trough-snouting scientists that lied to produce results their paymasters wanted, and thus muddied the whole issue to the point it's a high-finance slanging match where both sides know they are right and the other side all smell of wee. Deadlock that may kill us all (either naturally or by our own hand depending on your standpoint).

What did I misunderstand?

Isn't this a complete set up by Google? They know how clickstream data works.

As I understand from the original story they had their own guys opt in to the Bing clickstream feedback thing, they searched repeatedly on nonsensical terms and then clicked on the same link each time after searching.

Later, they enter the term in to Bing and the only matches that it has are the clickstream data that says "when people searched for this term they then clicked on this link". So that link is displayed as the search result?

So is this not them opting in to another companies "improve our results" program, sending poisoned results back, and then complaining that the poisoned results were displayed?

Wouldn't this work for "strings no one is ever going to search on" with any automated feedback system?

No offence meant, but...

Carefully, but incorrectly.

Just because you wish history happened in a way more to your current political liking doesn't mean it was so. There are many Scots, Welsh and even Irish that made important contributions to the terror that was the British Empire.

The server version of Win7 is...

Heh.

So if your machine is already compromised to the point they can change the MBR (which any half decent AV should spot and prevent) then they can run this admittedly very clever bit of code on your machine.

Mostly agree.

There should be (might be?) a legal way to transfer the ticket or get a refund if you can't go. But, as much as I hate to agree with the overpriced festival organisers, it's the wanker touts buying up huge swathes of tickets and selling them on at inflated prices and con artist scum selling forgeries to the gullible/desperate that forced this state of affairs.